rded his secret from all men, who in the face
of fierce opposition and intrigue had raised a little army to follow
him--they knew not where. Who had surprised Kaskaskia, cowed the tribes
of the North in his own person, and by sheer force of will drew after
him and kept alive a motley crowd of men across the floods and through
the ice to Vincennes.

We sat far into the night, the Captain listening as I had never seen
a man listen. And when at length I had finished he was for a long
time silent, and then he sprang to his feet with an oath that woke the
sleeping soldiers forward and glared at me.

"My God!" he cried, "it is enough to make a man curse his uniform to
think that such a man as Wilkinson wears it, while Clark is left to rot,
to drink himself under the table from disappointment, to plot with the
damned Jacobins--"

"To plot!" I cried, starting violently in my turn.

The Captain looked at me in astonishment.

"How long have you been away from Louisville?" he asked.

"It will be a year," I answered.

"Ah," said the Captain, "I will tell you. It is more than a year since
Clark wrote Genet, since the Ambassador bestowed on him a general's
commission in the army of the French Republic."

"A general's commission!" I exclaimed. "And he is going to France?" The
nation which had driven John Paul Jones from its service was now to lose
George Rogers Clark!

"To France!" laughed the Captain. "No, this is become France enough.
He is raising in Kentucky and in the Cumberland country an army with a
cursed, high-sounding name. Some of his old Illinois scouts--McChesney,
whom you mentioned, for one--have been collecting bear's meat and
venison hams all winter. They are going to march on Louisiana and
conquer it for the French Republic, for Liberty, Equality--the Rights of
Man, anything you like."

"On Louisiana!" I repeated; "what has the Federal government been
doing?"

The Captain winked at me and sat down.

"The Federal government is supine, a laughing-stock--so our friends the
Jacobins say, who have been shouting at Mr. Easton's tavern all winter.
Nay, they declare that all this country west of the mountains, too,
will be broken off and set up into a republic, and allied with that most
glorious of all republics, France. Believe me, the Jacobins have not
been idle, and there have been strange-looking birds of French plumage
dodging between the General's house at Clarksville and the Bear Grass."

I was silent,